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Larry Whitmer
Luna, NM
Interview: April 20, 2011
I am Larry Whitmer. I am directly related to the pioneer families of Swapp, Laney, and Judd. I was born in Springerville, Arizona in the rock hospital in 1950. I grew up in Alpine, went elsewhere as an adult, and I came back to live in Alpine to care for my mother and father. I am retired and I now live in Luna, NM at the Melvin Swapp cabin.
My parents
My father was Harold H. Whitmer. He was born in 1909 in Alpine, and my mother was Hesse Swapp. She was born in 1915 in Luna.
My grandparents on my father’s side
My grandfather on my dad’s side was David Whitmer. The Whitmers came to Alpine around the turn of the century. My father was one of the first Whitmers born in Alpine. The Whitmers came to the United States, the way my dad tells it, from Germany. There were six Whitmers that came over here from Germany, apparently from near the German- Swiss border.
My grandparents on my mother’s side
My grandfather was James Melvin Swapp, who was my mother’s father. His wife, my grandmother, was Lucy Celeste Laney. The old Laney house in Luna is down this road (from Community Center) on the left hand side. My mom liked her Grandma Laney very well but she didn’t know much about her.
My great-grandparents on my father’s side
My great- grandfather was Don Carlos Judd. He was gone before I was born so I don’t know a lot about him. According to my father, his parents were German and spoke German. They spoke English very poorly. They had immigrated to this country through Spain and through Mexico. That was very early.
My great- grandparents on my mother’s side
About 1880, my great-grandfather Swapp came through Luna driving a herd of cows from somewhere to the north, probably in Utah. He was either herding them to a ranch in Alma, NM or in Cliff, NM, somewhere in that general vicinity. He came through Luna and the next year he brought his mother here and settled. In time he married. I am not sure about the date. My great- grandmother’s maiden name was Mortezen. She had some history written up and it told how they came into the area. They actually had a house that was within a thousand feet NE of where the Bush Valley Fort stood and they built it when the Bush Valley Fort was there. So these actually are my earliest ancestors in the area.
What it was like growing up in Alpine
When I was growing up we were on a small, hard-time little farm. We did everything we could to stay alive. We enjoyed it most of the time, too. Where the Alpine school is now, we had 40 acres joining it to the north. We were out of town. I had one brother, and one brother died very young. I was the youngest of the family. I had three sisters. They were pretty well grown by the time I came along. I was almost like a second family. I enjoyed my folks and after it was all said and done, I came back from Alaska to see that they didn’t have to go to a nursing home.
I went to school in Alpine. All my brothers and sisters did too. Of course when you got to the eighth grade in Alpine you went to Round Valley. I didn’t have a lot of friends because we weren’t in Alpine proper. Usually when we got home from school we had chores to do until it got dark.
We had chickens, pigs, and cows. When I was a small boy I picked up the chips to make sure there were chips to start the fire with every morning. It was always my chore. I had to make sure the chicken eggs were gathered so the chickens didn’t eat them. Later on I kind of evolved into being the caretaker of those kinds of things. We always had a garden in the summer. If you were lucky you had two of them. One of them you froze down and one you kept growing. Things were hard. Thinking back, I shouldn’t worry about these times. We have things today that I never had in my life until I got to be older.
I also helped my mom carry the mail. We had the route to the Blue. My mom usually took care of the mail delivery, even though my dad had it under his name. She was carrying it because he was busy working most of the time cutting logs or farming. In later years he went to work for the Forest Service. Sometimes I observed that his life was going pretty much down hill after he quit logging and went to work for the government. It was not nearly as good a life.
On the mail route at that time there were two different routes. In the summertime you had six months to carry it by way of Williams Valley, and down to Diamond Rock. Mr. Hefner had the Diamond Rock Lodge. Then came Buffalo Crossing. George Hill usually stayed there in a campground, in the summer time and we delivered to him. He was rather an infamous or famous gentleman. He came here often and his mother’s name was Smith. She had the last place on the Blue. It was their homestead.
George had been a deputy sheriff in Clifton. He had been shot in the head three times and he lived through it each time. He also had been on the other side of the law. There was a group that had either robbed a bank, or were thought to have robbed a bank. George Hill was one of them. They were down at the Black River and the posse was chasing them. The posse came across the ridge, and the ones below sky-lined the others and killed them. I was trying to find his book. He did have a hand- written book that turned into literature. I’m afraid somebody took that. In his book he said people were coming after them and they didn’t know who they were so they shot them. You know back, then you shot first and asked questions later.
Both my folks lived in a land that was truly dark. No electronics and no lights. Even as a child I remember in the winter, hearing old Eddie Jepson outside doing chores in the morning. I could hear him come out the back door and cough. That was a mile away. Everything was so crystal clear and no background noise. It was a whole other world. The white house on the hill that is seen from Highway 180 is where Eddie lived.
Electricity in Alpine was really limited. It had come in by the time I could remember. I think it came in around 1953 or ’54, so I would have been three or four years old. I have never been sure whether it was a blessing or a curse.
How I came to live in Luna
About a couple of marriages back, I was married and living in Pleasaton, NM and it was a very expensive marriage. But to go on with the story, Alpine had been sold by that time, and my ex-wife got the money for it. And Uncle Phil said, “Why don’t you stay in Mel’s place and take care of it. I’ll give you a fifteen- year lease if you will just take care of the house. It was Granddad’s old house. Originally I had owned it because my mom had given it to me at the end of her life. But I traded it for land on the other side of the road. I’ve been here since 2000.
That wrought- iron sign over the entrance to the Mel Swapp place was done by Dennis and Uncle Phil. I think Uncle Phil prompted it and Dennis did the work. Granddad did homestead that place. That piece had been held in reservation and it was turned loose for patenting, and Granddad patented it.
Originally when Granddad was here there was lots of land. He owned the land all the way to the head of the ditch. He owned the old Steel place up on the mountain. He owned a lot of land. He ran cows from Turner Peak all the way into the Blue, and all across the top of the mountain here.